In some situations, exchange of certain information with a node of a mobile network, e.g., a node of a Radio Access Network (RAN), may be useful for other nodes, which may be located outside the mobile network or in a different section of the mobile network. Examples of such other nodes are nodes implementing application functions and nodes of acceleration or optimization functions which, in view of the hierarchy of the mobile network, are located above the core network. The other node may for example obtain user-level information on radio conditions, position of a user equipment (UE), such as an identity of a cell the UE is associated with, or capacity of the RAN. On the other hand, a node in the RAN may also benefit from information provided by the other node, e.g., from information on services used by a certain user. In the RAN, such information may for example be valuable as additional input to radio resource management procedures.
However, such exchange of information is not straightforward to implement. For example, although communication between nodes of the mobile network may be implemented on the basis of a packet network, the node of the mobile network may be provided with a network address which is not externally routable. For example, a node of a RAN could be provided with an Internet Protocol (IP) address selected from a private address subrange. Further, the network address of the node could be unknown to other nodes, and these nodes will not know how to address the node of the mobile network. Accordingly, such a network address would not be suitable for establishing a communication channel from other nodes outside the RAN.
Accordingly, there is a need for techniques which allow for efficiently implementing exchange of information with respect to a node of a mobile network.